This invention relates to the field of network analysis, and in particular to user-configurable visualizations for network application performance tools.
More and more applications are designed to be “network-enabled”, and the demands for efficient network performance continue to escalate. With increased reliance upon network communications, the demands for network analysis tools also continue to escalate.
To remain competitive, providers of network analysis tools strive to achieve market distinction. Such market distinction is generally achieved by providing inherent analysis capabilities that other providers do not provide, or by providing a user interface that is preferable to the intended user. Significant market research is devoted to identifying the intended users of a tool and the expectations of these users.
Conventionally, the developers of a network analysis tool attempt to anticipate the needs or desires of a majority of their users and to provide one or more display formats that are determined to satisfy these needs and desires. Generally, at least two formats are provided: a graphic display that illustrates the flow of traffic between nodes as a function of time, and a tabular display. The tabular display is generally configured to include each identified characteristic of the message, whereas the graphic display is configured to illustrate only a few characteristics.
In the realm of network analysis tools, such as a tool that displays the transfer of packets among network nodes, a common graphic display format is a Data Exchange Chart, which uses a horizontal time-line to represent each node, and lines or arrows between the node time lines to represent each packet. The placement of the arrow indicates the time of transmission, the time of reception, and the direction of flow, and a feature of the arrow, such as its thickness or color, is used to represent the packet size. Each of these graphically illustrated message characteristics (source node, destination node, transmission time, reception time, message size) is selected as being the characteristics of interest to most of the potential customers/users of the network analysis tool.
As the use of network analysis tools increases, the diversity of the users of the tools increases, and it becomes increasingly difficult to anticipate their needs or desires for the tools. Even when the needs and desires are defined, the cost of developing or modifying a tool to satisfy many diverse requirements increases exponentially. These development costs are particularly sensitive to tasks related to the “look and feel” of a tool, as user preferences are highly subjective, yet often determinative with regard to whether a user chooses to purchase the tool.
When a new class of users and/or potential customers is identified, a significant amount of market research is generally performed to identify the needs and desires of the new users. If a different graphic output is required to provide a display that illustrates the particular characteristics of interest for this group, the development of the new output format generally consumes substantial development time. In like manner, if a particular ‘favored’ customer expresses a desire for a customized graphic output that illustrates different and/or additional characteristics, relative to the default output format(s), a substantial amount of development time may be consumed developing such a customized format.
It would be advantageous to reduce development costs by allowing users to customize the display of a network analysis tool. It would also be advantageous to allow a user to define criteria for distinguishing among messages and displaying the distinguished messages. It would also be advantageous to allow a user to augment a network analysis tool with user-definable programs to distinguish among messages. It would also be advantageous to label distinguished messages, and to allow a user to control the labeling.
These advantages, and others, can be realized by a network analysis system that provides for a user-definable display of information related to messages communicated on the network. The network analysis system includes one or more display formats that provide a display of message exchanges between nodes of a network, and a display augmenter that provides additional information on the display based on a user-defined visualization. The user defined visualization includes augmenting the display based on user-defined message characteristics and/or augmenting the display with user-defined labels and/or user-configured labelings. To further facilitate user control of the augmentation of the display, the system accepts user-defined programs for discriminating among messages, for controlling the labeling of messages, and for controlling the coloring of messages and labels. Commonly used user-defined characteristics and labels are stored in a library, for use via a selection from among the library entries.
Throughout the drawings, the same reference numerals indicate similar or corresponding features or functions. The drawings are included for illustrative purposes and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.